Okay, so I’ve been doing a little streaming again, and I’m having fun with it. But at the same time, my poor old Laptop (a 2019 model, with a GTX 1060 graphics card in it) can only play certain, mostly older games. Hell, it struggles to stream even some simple games here or there, but I just can’t afford to replace it right now!
But you know what it can stream? Live video, especially if it were at a low resolution like 720p.
Would that work for gaming? Probably not! But would it work for showing video of my play surface while I’m streaming a solo actual-play podcast?
Yes, it would do just fine for that!
Here’s what I’m thinking: I have a lot of experience in doing TTRPG actual-plays, especially solo ones. So I could point my webcam at my game table, so y’all can see my books, notes, dice rolls, and solo oracles (mostly card draws from the “GameMaster’s Apprentice” storyteller’s decks). I would not appear on camera, other than my hands as they manipulate things on the table, but I would provide the audio narration and any voices that might be needed.
This would work better than my old audio-only solo actual-play podcast, because I could maybe use pictures or miniatures to represent which character is speaking at any one time. If I prepare enough, maybe I could show their image on the main screen, with the dice and whatnot in a picture-in-picture mode?
Regardless, some of this might not even be necessary, because I’m thinking of playing a very specific type of game, at least to start off with. I’m thinking of playing “Lonely World”.
So what is LW? It is your basic end-of-the-world tabletop roleplaying game, but you are the last person left alive on Earth. There is some threat that has wiped out the rest of Humanity still around, be it Zombies, Aliens, Demons, Robots, or whatever, and you have to figure out a way to stay alive in this hellish landscape. The game is ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ (PbtA), a system I am very familiar with, and LW is a game I really want to play. In fact, it was going to be coming up soon on my list of games to play on my old show, before I had to retire due to voice issues.
But my voice has recovered to a large degree, and I’m up to playing games again, so why not give this a try? Sure, I’ll have to be careful, and likely limit my gameplay so as to not damage my voice again. But I’m pretty sure I can pull this off, if I’m careful and stay away from doing a lot of different voices. That was what did me in last time, you see, thus why I’m thinking of sticking to truly solo adventures.
Just one character. No non-player characters. No monsters that speak, or at least keep them to a minimum. The only question is, do I livestream these adventures on Twitch, or pre-record them and edit them for YouTube?
